Will Video Kill the Book Review Stars?
A few months ago, I wrote about whether social networking makes fancy book critics irrelevant, in the context of comparing Goodreads.com, “”a free website that allows you to see what your friends are reading,” to the “Good Reads” list cobbled together by the “smart readers” of the National Book Critics Circle—the central conceit of my argument being that passionate, heartfelt recommendations from people with whom you have ongoing relationships/conversations online will carry greater weight than detached critical evaluations from people who believe “[books] need to be sifted for the public, to see what matters.”
In that vein, here’s a recent YouTube post from a young fan of Tom Rob Smith‘s Child 44:
What she lacks in “poise” she more than makes up in genuine enthusiasm. (And, from a cursory inspection, she appears to have been vlogging long enough, and about enough other things, that I highly doubt she’s a plant.) But as our social networks get more intricate and complex, more people (especially young people) are going to be just as comfortable creating these kinds of video recommendations as they already are typing about their favorite books. The intricacy aspect bears underlining: I’ve pointed out before that one of the main concerns with promotional videos is where they’re supposed to “air” so people can see them, but videos like this will (already do) have a natural context within increasingly elaborate social networking environments.
The LitCrit establishment is doing its best to catch up with blogs and podcasts—the question now is whether which of those efforts are truly embracing the cultural shifts, and which are little more than what Seth Godin has dubbed “meatball sundaes.”
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